


the stone and the sea

by RoamingSignals



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Gods, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Meet-Cute, Nostalgia, Suare:Ruins, modern with magic, side hencas, side kunwin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:54:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28059510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoamingSignals/pseuds/RoamingSignals
Summary: This town has roots. The people have roots. The only thing that does not have roots is the sea, ever moving, and somehow it always comes home.“Hello,” Yangyang says, in a language that tastes like rust in his mouth. “Do you remember me?”
Relationships: Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Liu Yang Yang
Comments: 14
Kudos: 130
Collections: THE COLLECTION





	the stone and the sea

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to ellie and appia for reading through this for me, and to any for make me like this ship enough to give it a try.
> 
> it was meant to be less than 10k but idk. i just liked it a lot. so now it's more than 10k. just a little though. i count that as a success. enjoy :)

The temple fell to the sea many years ago. The ruins are rooted in the heart and soul of the town — none of her residents have ever seen the glory before it sank. Now it’s a mess of columns and rubble atop a crumbling cliff. Stone, stone, more stone, and the sea.

Not even Yangyang’s gran saw the temple as it was meant to be seen, and she was the oldest person he’d ever known.

Truthfully, he thinks the rubble suits the town better. All of the museums hint at breathtaking architecture and sparkling grandeur. It might have looked a little silly next to the rickety bus stop and the lurid yellow library. The whole town is crumbling — a broken building is a better match than a place of worship.

It’s not that the town is _bad_ , really. Yangyang has spent many of his formative years here, and there’s a certain nostalgia even the first time you step on the old cobblestones. Kun says it’s a liminal space — separate from the rest of the world, grounded in reality, a place that follows you. A place you can always return to. Yangyang thinks that’s bullshit, but Kun’s always been a bit of a romantic.

Yangyang steps off the train by his lonesome and recognizes the woman standing at the till. “Hello,” he says, in a language that tastes like rust in his mouth. “Do you remember me?”

“No,” she says. “Enjoy your stay.”

He supposes that’s fair. He only remembers her face and the sweep of her hair. Yangyang hopes he himself looks far different than the last time he took the train into town. He’d been fourteen and gangling.

Yangyang doesn’t bother checking her nametag, but he gives her an awkward smile and lets her stamp his passport and wanders out of the station, looking for the sun.

The town looks more or less the same as it had outside the train window — a little dreary, a little lifeless, with roots. There are roots everywhere. The buildings have roots, the people have roots, the sun is so sunken into the pavement that it has roots, too. The air is clean, the brine from the ocean is thrown over the space like a blanket, and Yangyang’s enormous suitcase is the heaviest thing for miles. He trudges it down the steps with a huff, only banging on someone’s heels once. He considers that a triumph.

There’s a handsome man with a giant sign standing out by the street, Yangyang’s name painted on in lurid green calligraphy. “How’d you do?” The gentlemen might as well have tipped his hat. His smile is huge, all white teeth and hospitality.

“Is there another Yangyang?” Yangyang asks. Kun was supposed to pick him up. Yangyang had been very clear about Kun picking him up.

“Kun is busy,” says the man, shaking his sign so the glitter rains down on the cement. “I volunteered!” The edges of his smile soften, a hair away from something manic, and he says, “it’s been too long.”

Yangyang squints, measuring features. In the same way Yangyang doesn’t look the same as he did, no one he knew here would either. The woman at the train station aside the faces have shifted, thinned, and weathered. This one beams, and Yangyang remembers. “Yukhei?”

Yukhei throws the sign aside and holds out his arms, miles wide. “You remembered!”

Barely. “How could I forget?” They’d been friends for summers only, running through sand and sea until winter rolled in and Yangyang left his grandmother’s house to head home for the sad months. “You got...tall.”

It’s an understatement. Yukhei towers over him. Yukhei towers over most of the passersby, so Yangyang tries not to get too sullen about it.

“You look the same.” Yukhei smiles like he knows it’s an insult even before Yangyang huffs. “Let’s head home. Kun cooked too much and Sicheng is about to pass out if we starve him any longer.”

It’s a cramped ride home, but the view is worth Yangyang’s discomfort. There’s so much that is the same, so much that is different, and so much that is beautiful. There are things that are ugly, too — Yukhei’s dinged up beater, for one — but when Yangyang weighs the scales he finds more beauty than anything.

“It’s been so long since I lived by the sea.”

Yukhei is kind enough not to mention that Yangyang has never lived by the sea, and still has never. “It’s pretty, right?”

“Yeah.” Yangyang purses his lips. “Have tourists been bad?”

“Not really.” Yukhei laughs. “Tourists trickle in, but this is a haunted town, you know? No one really settles in unless they were born here.”

Yangyang doesn’t really think it’s haunted. It’s a little sad and a little dreary, and there’s regret blooming out of the cracks in the sidewalk, but Yangyang can never get his head on straight the way he can here. His mother always said the sea air purifies bad thoughts. Yangyang thinks that’s bullshit, too, but at least it’s not romantic — it’s just wishful.

Kun’s inn has been refurbished innumerable times. When Yangyang was young, it belonged to Kun’s aunt. When Yangyang was younger, it belonged to a silly man with a penchant for betting important things on a game of chess.

The inn used to be a faint purple, chipped and covered in ivy, but now it’s a fair mauve and covered in sunspots. The ivy is still there, but Yangyang thinks the flowers are more striking. The summer is turning over and the colors are vibrant against the faded wash of paint. An old man is rocking on a swing on the porch, his shoes off and his sun hat covering his face even as the sun goes down. A cat is stealing his sandwich. Birds watch the sunset.

It’s nice.

Sicheng throws the door open. “If you don’t get in here right now and set the table, I’ll eat you as an appetizer,” he says, stoic.

Yangyang heaves his suitcase up the steps. “Um. Hello. Lovely to see you.”

“We can’t be mean to our _guest_ ,” Yukhei wails, twirling the car keys around his finger. “What if he never comes back?”

Sicheng sniffs. “Good.” But he opens his arms and Yangyang falls between them with a grin. “I’m hungry though, for real. Get inside. Leave the suitcase to Yukhei — your chicken arms are going to snap.”

The year is tipping into tourist season, and even if the town is haunted that won’t stop the college kids from burrowing into their beaches. There are a few rooms occupied in the inn, a smattering of guests wandering through the hallways. A few teenagers are playing cards in front of the main window, and outside in the garden Yangyang sees a woman sketching in a notepad.

Kun and Sicheng live here year round, and Sicheng dutifully takes them into the lower levels where Yangyang can smell something savory cooking. It’s been a long day — he’d gotten up too early and was still somehow almost late for his train, and has spent most of his afternoon staring out a window. His back aches, bones snapping into place.

“You’re here!” Kun says. He doesn’t even turn over his shoulder, busy with something on the stove. “Go set the table before Sicheng gets grumpy.”

“Too late,” Yukhei says, laughing with a boom, but he shows Yangyang where the silverware is and together they properly prepare the kitchen table.

They don’t ask him why he’s staying here rather than at his grandmother’s house, but they ask him a million other things — how are his parents, how is school, how was the travelling, how is he — and Yangyang loves talking about himself so he floats through the conversation happily. Stuffed full and surrounded by people he’s only seen either in a memory or on the other side of a computer screen for, what, a decade?

It’s been far too long since Yangyang was here last.

“Do you need a ride in the morning?” Yukhei asks, eyes wide. There’s sauce all around his mouth that Sicheng is pointedly not telling him about, but Yangyang doesn’t think Yukhei would care either way.

“Ah, no, it’s fine.” Yangyang laughs. “I think I’d rather just walk.”

Kun frowns. “You do know the house is on the outskirts of town. That’s an hour's walk from here.”

Yangyang has no intention of going to the house tomorrow. “I just want to explore tomorrow. I’m too tired to worry about packing stuff up.” He yawns, just to prove a point, and Sicheng raises his eyebrow but doesn’t mention the stink of the excuse.

Sicheng is well-versed in making his opinion known without saying it out loud. “If you’re tired, perhaps you should go to bed now?” he says, even though the sun is still up. “Especially if you’re going to be doing a lot of walking in the morning.”

Yukhei looks heartbroken. “But Kun made _pie_.”

Kun’s eyes glitter. “Of course, the pie can wait. If Yangyang is tired we should let him sleep.”

“I’m awake enough for pie,” Yangyang whines. “I’m always awake enough for pie.”

Later, after dinner and dishes and dessert, Kun takes Yangyang to his temporary room. The suitcase is already sitting at the foot of the bed, and Kun hands Yangyang the spare blanket he carried in from the hall. “I hope it suits you.”

“Oh, uh, thanks.” Yangyang smoothes out the fraying edges of the blanket, the corners wrapped in satin ribbon. He wonders if Kun’s aunt made this blanket herself. “I’m sure it’s fine.” He really is exhausted — he could sleep anywhere. The train ride had been ideal for sleeping, but he’d spent most of it staring out the window and thinking the same thoughts over and over. “Thanks again, for letting me stay.”

“Of course.” Kun smiles, leaning against the doorway. He’s at ease here, in his house. Weird, compared to how foreign everything feels to Yangyang, despite what should be familiar. “You’re family, you know?”

Yangyang smiles at him through a yawn. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t get sappy.”

Kun laughs, and keeps laughing as he walks down the hallway and leaves Yangyang to his exhaustion. 

* * *

It’s not that Yangyang wants to avoid the reason he came back to this seaside town.

Actually, he would really honestly love to avoid it for as long as possible and everyone around him knows that. It makes it worse, because Sicheng pointedly doesn’t say anything about Yangyang’s excuses and Yukhei is laughing too loudly and Kun has left the key to the house hanging on the peg but never prompts Yangyang to take it and it’s frustrating. Yangyang isn’t made of glass. He doesn’t need to be babied.

He walks out of the inn with the key still on the peg but his mood is sour.

It’s a nice day. The air is cool from the sea, and it might heat up as the day goes on until everything smells like fish and tourism but for now everything is settled into summer chill. The inn is situated further from the beach than most of the other big hotels — most of its clientele are regulars or long term vacationers who prefer being kept away from the college students and the wanderers. The street is a little quieter, but Yangyang walks towards town center and revels in the way the volume turns up notch by notch.

He doesn’t have a lot of money to spare and his mouth trips over the words that spill out of the locals, but he sees a stand selling hot cakes and he buys a few anyway. The old auntie manning the stall talks too fast even as she teases him for his rusty language, but she throws in an extra cake so Yangyang thinks he’s charmed her accordingly.

“You’ve been away for a long time?” she asks, still speaking quickly, but she gives him enough time to form his own sentences.

“Yes,” he says. “Not since I was a child.”

“You’d better go pay your respects to our gods, hmm?” Her smile is curling. “They like the attention. Vain creatures, don’t you think?”

Yangyang laughs. “I’ll offer them a hot cake.” He looks down at the few he has in his hands. “Do they like sharing?”

“There’s only one, nowadays.” She clicks her tongue, still amused by her own joke. “But he’s picky, you know.”

“Picky?”

“Yes, love. Can’t be picky anymore, though. And my hot cakes are the best in the province.”

They smell amazing, and Yangyang takes a huge bite out of one just so the auntie will smile and give him another.

“You should head up to the temple anyway, dear. It’s beautiful this time of year.”

For a dilapidated structure crumbling into the sea, Yangyang is sure she’s right. “Maybe I will.” He grins at her, taking another bite and talking through a mouth of hot cake. “Thank you, auntie!”

She sniffs, but there is another customer creeping up on the stall and her attention divides. “Have a good morning, hmm? And be careful!”

Yangyang’s memory of the area is hazy, the film of childhood warping the map in his mind, but it is not hard to find the path to the ruins. It is almost as if the entire town was built around the temple, pointed towards the lonely building on it’s lonely cliff. There are few signs, but the locals are more than happy to point him the right way, and eventually the old buildings fall away and the path is clear without Yangyang having to ask.

It is beautiful, even from this far away.

Nestled among the rocks, the sea is visible for miles. It’s a swath of deep blue, a foundation of gray, and a blooming flower of white and ruin. The path is dirt, packed into the earth from thousands and thousands of feet. There’s green along either side, swaying in the wind. Everything smells like salt.

It’s here, at the base of the cliff, that Yangyang starts to feel a bit silly. The hot cakes are growing cold in his hands, and he feels like a tourist in a place that should feel like home.

The temple was not Yangyang’s favorite place when he would come here. He loved the beach, and his gran’s kitchen, and the playground. He _hated_ the library, a tomb of summer reading requirements, and the grocer was a very nice old man but Yangyang found the place exceptionally boring. The temple hovered somewhere in between in his heart, some kind of hanging middle-ground.

Yangyang reaches the peak of the mountain and finds that it has not changed in many years.

The details in his memory are hazy at best — ivory and muted gold, crumbling white, and green peaking through cracks in stone and statue. The sea is a landscape of blue, cool and beyond what can be seen by one man. The majesty of it all.

Yangyang feels out of place with his dirty sneakers and the cooling hot cakes gripped in his hand. He feels small, and sloppy, and sad.

He isn’t entirely sure why he’s sad. There’s nothing here to regret, no nostalgia of Yangyang’s to resonate with the loss. Perhaps it’s merely the fact that something beautiful has fallen, and left a ruin in its stead. Even that makes no sense, because Yangyang has only ever known it for what it is — a ruin — and it’s still beautiful.

Yangyang steps up to the ledge and breathes in the sweet smell of salt and open air. The toes of his shoes hang over the edge of marble, brushing against rock and rubble. The sea, the stone, the statues, and him. His shoulders square. This view is enough to make someone feel like a king.

And then — a whisper.

Electric.

Yangyang jolts forward and his balance tips from sovereign to stumbling. He is too close to the edge. His heart jerks, hands flailing for stability. The wind seems to rush passed, almost with the intention of sending him tumbling.

A hand twists in the back of his shirt and pulls him backwards.

Too far, tumbling, but falling on his ass is better than falling forward and into the sea. Yangyang clatters on the ground with a thud, a whine, and an expletive. His heart is racing beyond what feels safe, and Yangyang clutches his chest so it doesn’t _beat beat beat_ out of his rib cage.

“Thanks, man,” Yangyang tells no one.

There’s no one there.

When Yangyang cranes his neck around he sees nothing. Just stone and rubble and ivory, blooming green and wind-rattled dust. He does not feel like he’s alone. There is someone here. He can still feel the hand at his back, like it lingers.

“Hello?” he asks, sprawled out on the ground.

No one says anything. A lot of good no one is.

Unnerved, off-balance, unsure, Yangyang stands up and wipes dust off his pants. His heart still races and he waits until it returns to something normal. The cake in his hand is mangled and inedible, and Yangyang takes a moment to throw it over the cliff face into the water. “Thank you, I guess,” he says to whoever is in the room, to no one. And then he leaves.

He cannot help but think about the whisper, the jolt, electric — _Who are you?_

Funny. Yangyang thinks he’d like to ask them the same question.

* * *

“Auntie! Who lives on the cliff? You said there was only one. Who are they?”

“Oh. There were ten of them, once. He’s the last one.”

“Who is he?”

“He isn’t anyone, dear. He is everything. Who am I to put limits on a god?”

* * *

“Did you stop by the house?” Kun asks him when Yangyang wanders back to the inn, windswept and wanting. He stands at the front desk, flipping through paperwork, but Kun has always had a way of giving you all his attention even if his eyes are elsewhere.

“No,” Yangyang says, only slightly guilty. “I took a walk.”

“Ah.” Kun hums. “That’s right. You did say you would.” It is none of Kun’s business whether Yangyang makes the heavy trek to his grandmother’s house or not, beyond the fact that he wants Yangyang to be alright and the dust to settle. There is a small crease to his brow, but his smile is sure. “Was it a good walk?”

There’s dirt on Yangyang’s shoes and his brain is alight, but he catches his breath and says, “Yes. I think it was.” He can still feel the hand at his back, and the rustle of a whisper at his ear.

_Who are you?_

Who.

What.

Yangyang’s thoughts run haphazard circles. “Have you ever been up to the ruins?”

Kun laughs. “The old temple? Of course. It’s a rite of passage here. And more than that, it’s lovely.”

“Have you ever seen anything up there?”

Now, Kun’s eyes lift up from the paperwork and pierce Yangyang to the core, softly and gently and with grace but so firmly it is as though he has been pinned to the drywall. “What sort of something?”

It feels suddenly impossible to explain. “Something...someone.”

“Someone?”

Sicheng pokes his head out of the backroom. “Is Yangyang seeing someone?” His eyebrows are raised into his hairline. “You’ve barely been here a day! Isn’t that so soon?”

“No!” Yangyang yowls so stridently that the man on the lobby couch jolts from his nap. He isn’t here for anything like that. No. His face is cherry red.

Kun looks at Sicheng with even measure. “Yangyang seems to have seen someone at the ruins.”

Sicheng pauses. “A tourist?”

“Well,” Yangyang starts, when they turn towards him expectantly. Again, the words are lost, and he clenches his fists around air until he sighs, unable to catch a thing. “I didn’t really _see_ anyone.”

For a moment, there is no sound beyond the snoring of the man on the couch sinking into slumber, but Sicheng snorts. He eases into the room, leaning against the door jamb in a way that strikes Yangyang as rather similar to Kun the night before. He supposes that happens when you spend so much time together. “The temple ruins are very mysterious. People don’t often go there.” He pauses, licking his lips. “I imagine it’s rather lonely.”

“It’s lovely,” Yangyang says.

“Lovely things can be lonely,” Kun replies. “Loveliness can make it lonelier.”

Yangyang supposes that’s true. There is a certain pain, knowing that people were not there to appreciate the view. A building left in disrepair with much potential — sad. Lonely. But Yangyang can’t imagine it when it was spectacular. What did it look like, when you couldn’t see the sky through the crumbled ceiling? When the ivy didn’t grow through the cracks and dust didn’t stick to your shoes? What was it back then, when everything was in its proper place? Was it lovely? Was it lonely?

“I didn’t go to the house,” Yangyang tells Sicheng, and only now is he guilty.

Oddly, the disapproval is soft and gentle. In this way he is also like Kun, even if it’s a harsher step. Sicheng simply sighs. “There is time,” he acquiesces. “The house will not go anywhere. It has thick roots.”

This town has roots. The people have roots. The sun has roots. The only thing that does not have roots is the sea, ever moving, and somehow it always comes home.

* * *

In the morning, Sicheng comes into Yangyang’s room along with the sun through the window. The hallway smells of sweet bread and the bedroom smells like sleep. “Good morning.”

It is far too early, but Yangyang rolls over with a groan and sees the blank look on Sicheng’s face anyway. “Good morning,” he mumbles into warm linens. It is so comfortable. He doesn’t want to move.

His stomach growls.

“Come.” Sicheng quirks an eyebrow, and then he’s turned on his heels and is long strides down the hallway before Yangyang has fully gained his faculties.

Early mornings make the days seem long. As a college student Yangyang rarely sees this side of the sun, but there is a casual peacefulness that is fulfilling. His eyelashes stick together and his stomach rumbles but he’s warm and there’s something delicious in the kitchen. There people here who care about him. There is nothing to do other than exist.

Yangyang feels like that is a gift.

There is a breakfast spread out on the kitchen table, pastry and peach bread with homemade butter and jams canned by the old man two streets over. Egg sizzles and the air simmers. Yangyang’s mouth is watering long before he takes full view of the room.

On the island, Kun is packing food into a picnic basket, Tupperware stuffed with meats and cheeses and fruits and vegetables all wrapped up in a red checkered cloth. “For later,” he says, when Yangyang makes a questioning noise.

Yangyang fights to be verbal — it really is too early. “Will you be able to take lunch away?”

“No, no,” Kun says, and Sicheng comes up behind and wraps his arms around Kun’s waist. “But I thought it would be nice for you to get out.”

“It’s sad being stuck here with the old people, don’t you think?” Sicheng asks, his chin hooked over Kun’s shoulders.

Yangyang makes a retching sound. “Gross.” They’re not even much older than Yangyang, but he’ll admit they paint a better picture of an adult than Yangyang stumbling through. He doesn’t want to sit and watch their eyes melt to honeyed goo in his free time. “Will you pack something for the market auntie?”

Kun has already packed something for the market auntie.

Yangyang is full on sweet bread until well into the afternoon, but the weather is still beautiful and the day is still young and he pulls the basket out and waves goodbye to the inn. The sun is cooler today, the clouds casting small shadows as Yangyang walks down the lane with his basket in hand.

The basket is too heavy, he thinks, as he trudges down the pavement. It’s not until he takes the treats out for the hot cake auntie that he realizes Kun packed far too much food for one person.

“Of course, there’s enough for two!” she says with abandon. “What kind of a picnic would it be by yourself?”

She is not the sort of person who can be argued with, and Yangyang is not inclined to disagree either. This does, however, leave him at a disadvantage — he does not have anyone to share it with.

The auntie laughs when he offers her more from his basket. “I’m too old to indulge in this,” she says and waves him on. “Find someone else, or eat your fill. You are young! It is too soon for you to be lonely.”

Perhaps it is this string of careful events that sends Yangyang to the ruins. He’s been thinking about this space, Kun packed far too much food, and the auntie insists now is not the time to be lonely. A series of events that guide his feet on the path, and a gust of wind that carries him forward.

All in all, it’s very strange. Yangyang is not the sort of person to get caught up on something small. There is usually too much going for him to linger on any one thing. Is it simply that the town is quiet, even with its tourists and its hauntings, and there is no sound to distract him?

Is it that this place is so quiet that it is distracting?

Yangyang does not like the quiet. He is not sure how he feels about this place.

When he steps his ratty sneakers on the broken marble the wing pushes him that last step, until he’s within the barriers of this tiny, ruined world and finds there’s nothing here he can touch. Stone, stone, more stone, and the sea.

He clutches the basket to his hands. “This is really weird.”

“Then why’d you come?”

Yangyang does not scream. He makes a noise that might be a scream if Yangyang were more inclined to be skittish and turns on his heels to come face to face with the most beautiful man he’s ever seen.

_Then_ he screams.

They’re close enough that Yangyang feels breath on his cheek, that his basket clips an arm, that he stumbles away in a rush and almost finds himself — yet again — on his ass in the middle of a ruin.

And, yet again, a hand curls into the fabric of his shirt and pulls him upright.

The basket drops to the floor in Yangyang’s panic, and then he’s standing far too close to a person whose face is so bright it nearly burns.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” says the stranger, delicately brushing Yangyang’s shoulder as though his near tumble caked him in dust and debris.

Yangyang very nearly says that they’ve never met, and thus they haven’t formed any sort of meaningful pattern — or something very close to that, a bit more stuttered, and perhaps with an expletive — but instead he picks up his basket and says, “I brought food.”

The man’s eyes light up, and he reaches out for the basket without a second thought. “You brought food that last time, as well,” he says, and shoots Yangyang with a sharp look. “You didn’t share.”

“You wanted my mushed up hot cake?”

A lifted chin. “I wanted it more than the brine did.” And then he sits on what might have been a wall, back when the temple had such things, and begins rifling through the basket.

Yangyang takes the opportunity to catch his own breath. The wind seems to have swept it away, as it does with all things eventually, and while Yangyang finds the scattered pieces he observes the mysterious haunting.

His mind first registered this person as _beautiful_. The gears catch up, and Yangyang determines upon a second inspection that his gut reaction was correct — this person is beautiful. He is beautiful in a sharp and obvious way, almost feline, with lifted cheekbones and a mouth that curls. His hair flutters in the wind, just a touch past his chin, and he wears robes that show much of his skin, especially as he lounges back in leisure. There is black on his forearm — ink — but it cannot be ink because it moves. There is another swath of black across his ribs when he shifts to sniff the Tupperware, but Yangyang cannot get a clear view of it. His feet are bare yet spotless, and there are flowers twined with twig in his hair like a crown.

“Who are you?” Yangyang asks.

The stranger looks over at him, unimpressed. “I’m the tenth.”

“The tenth?”

“Ten.”

“Your name is Ten?”

“It can be.” He sniffs, and his smile simmers. “What does that tell you about me?”

Nothing. It tells Yangyang nothing — the answer to his question and nothing more. It does not tell Yangyang why Ten is here when moments ago he was not, or why yesterday Ten was both here and not here.

_Who are you?_

“It’s not the best sort of question,” Ten says, opening up a tin and tearing a roll in half with his fingers. “Names are very important to fairies or demons, but what are they to you? You can’t do anything with it. Assuming you only have a few questions, there are plenty that are more interesting.”

Yangyang frowns. “Why would I only have a few?”

Ten licks glaze off of his fingers. “Humans only live for, what, twelve years?” He squints. “That is only perhaps...however many questions. I don’t know. Not nearly enough.”

“Twelve years!” Yangyang roars, even though his mind is caught up on _humans humans humans_. “I’m twenty one!”

“That’s barely any more than twelve,” Ten says simply.

Yangyang stares, incredulous. “How old are you, exactly?”

And then Ten looks him straight in the eye and says, “as old as the land, give or take.”

The auntie had said that there were many of them here, long ago. Gods, and things with power. That only one was left, and that perhaps he is lonely. “That just can’t be true,” Yangyang says with surety he does not feel.

Ten frowns at the tub of peaches and sets it aside. “What do you know about what’s true?”

Nothing. Yangyang stares out at the sea and thinks, _incredible. I know nothing._

“Twenty one, twelve, what does it matter?” Ten shrugs. “You have so little time to ask questions. There are far too many for you to know much of anything, don’t you think?”

With a sigh, Yangyang walks over and sits at Ten’s other side, stealing one of the tubs Ten has his hands in and popping a piece of meat in his mouth. “People live much longer than twenty one,” he says eventually. “There are people that are one hundred and older.”

“That’s so sad.” Ten tilts his head to the side and squints at Yangyang. “I can tell you how long you’ll live, if you’d like advance warning.”

“Uh, no.” Yangyang grimaces. “No, thanks. I’m good.”

“Yes. I don’t know that I’d want the reminder, either.” Ten picks at his bread and looks out to the sea. “It has been so long since someone brought me anything. I’m hungry.”

Yangyang purses his lips, shifting uncomfortably where he sits. “So you’re, like, a god?”

Ten raises an eyebrow at him. “I’m not like a god. I _am_ a god.”

“And you’re the tenth?”

He hums in agreement.

“Where are the others?”

Ten pauses just for a moment. “They are scattered.” He sweeps his arm across the landscape with a grandeur that Yangyang thinks is rather lost on the moment, as they’re currently just two people eating sweet rolls in a dilapidated building. “They are old, and less connected to the space, so they wander.”

So Ten cannot wander. Or perhaps he is not old, by the standards of the immortal. He doesn’t look old. He looks like a friend, not much older than Yangyang himself, but the cut of his bone is almost otherworldly.

He grimaces at the fruit as though it offends him and tells Yangyang to return it to the basket.

“Would you like to wander?” Yangyang asks, not a minute later.

Ten thinks on this the longest he’s thought throughout their entire conversation. “No.” He pulls his knees up to his chest and his eyes are far away. Wind in his robes, ivy and marble at his feet, ink on his skin, flowers in his hair. And the sea. All this, and the sea. “Don’t you think the view is lovely?”

As the moments pass. Yangyang takes the cloth from the basket and spreads it out against the marble floor. The foundation is shaky and cracked, but it’s easy enough to hide with checkered red and white. “Have you ever been on a picnic?”

“Me?” Ten asks, haughty. “I’ve feasted with kings.”

“But has it been on a picnic?”

Ten sniffs. “No.” He looks at Yangyang curiously. “What is the difference between eating on the floor and a picnic?”

“Picnics are more fun.” They’re cozier, Yangyang thinks, but he hasn’t been on that many himself. Picnics remind him of summers, sweetmeats, lemonade, parks, family. His summers here are all painted in the same palette — warm, friendly, hazy. “And I know you’ve eaten on the floor.” He saw how Ten ate from the Tupperware with his fingers. However haughty, this person is not prim.

“I have.” Ten grins. “But was it a picnic?”

Kun has packed plenty of foods, and as Ten picks through it he finds plenty that he likes. The tub of fruit stays firmly on Yangyang’s side of the blanket, but Ten eats every other dish with a sparkle in his eyes. “Did you make this?” Ten asks, sauce along his mouth.

“Uh.” Yangyang blinks. “Yeah.”

Ten snorts. “Alright.”

It’s worth changing the subject. “The auntie said you were picky,” he notes, eyeing the empty containers Ten has already devoured. Auntie is trustworthy enough — she’s been correct about most things. In this, however, it seems she was mistaken.

“I _am_ picky,” Ten grouses. He delicately lays his robes out around him. “I’m picky about lots of things. My appearance—”

“She did say you were vain.”

Ten’s eyes spark. “We’re _all_ vain.” His chin raises, shoulders squared. “Why wouldn’t we be? It’s our right, and a privilege.”

Yangyang supposes if he were an eternally youthful entity living in a palace to be worshiped, he would also be vain. As it is, he is a struggling college student without malleable plans for the future and he is still a bit vain.

And he looks nothing like Ten looks.

“We enjoy the attention,” Ten says, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. Yangyang sees the moving ink at his wrist and wonders about the shape of it. “But we are picky with our company.”

Yangyang blinks. “Should I be, like, flattered?”

“Not too much.” Ten grins and it’s wicked. “After all, I cannot afford to be very picky these days.”

And although he says it jokingly, Yangyang sees that it’s true. Ten’s eyes dim, and the ruins around them are too quiet. The wind whistling is their only companion, and Yangyang feels as though he’s out of place. The wind and Ten call this place their home. He cannot imagine the wind is incredible company.

“I can stop by more often,” he offers.

Ten does not light up. He keeps his eyes firmly on the food in his hands, but Yangyang thinks that Ten might be vain enough to deny himself open enthusiasm. “You may, if you’d like.” When Ten does look at him, his look is very pointed. “If you bring me something fun, you may visit as often as you like.”

Yangyang thinks he himself is rather fun. “I’m only in town for the summer.”

“I see.” Ten purses his mouth. “That is just a blink, but I’ll allow it.”

Yangyang laughs. “Okay. I’ll stop by again.”

Ten does not help Yangyang tidy up when the meal is finished. He merely sits on his ledge and watches Yangyang snap lids on dirty dishes and wrap it all up in the cloth to shove back into the basket. “Excellent service,” Ten drawls.

“Gross.” Yangyang stands upright with a sigh. “Next time I come please don’t nearly make me fall into the ocean.”

“We all fall into the ocean eventually,” Ten says with a flap of hand.

Yangyang doesn’t think that’s true, nor is it a promise, but he takes it for what it is and waves goodbye before heading back down the cobblestone path.

* * *

It is Yukhei who asks him this time. “Did you visit the house today?”

“No,” Yangyang says, as though he’s sucking on a lemon.

Yukhei takes it with good grace, as he takes anything. “That’s cool, man. You want to meet my boyfriend tomorrow? We’re getting lunch.”

“Sure.” Yangyang dumps the empty Tupperware into Kun’s sink with a slump. “That sounds nice.”

* * *

“ _Leftovers?_ ”

Ten is standing at the entry of the once-polished temple when Yangyang makes his way up the hill. His hands are on his hips and the wind blows his robes. The flowers in his hair shed petals in the air, an unlimited amount all dancing. And he looks at Yangyang with a sniff and says, “You are late and all you’ve brought me is _leftovers?_ ”

Yangyang shrugs with the to-go container in his hands. “What do you want me to do?”

“Whoever cooked yesterday should have cooked again!”

“He’s busy!” Kun has an entire inn to run. Although when Yangyang mentioned making a stop after getting lunch with Yukhei and Kunhang, Kun smiled as though in on the joke. But if he did not offer to make food, Yangyang was certainly not going to ask him for his time.

Also, it would have been too awkward walking into a restaurant with a picnic basket.

“It’s still good,” Yangyang says, handing it to Ten. It’s Thai food from Yukhei’s family restaurant, and although Yangyang has personally never been to Thailand Yukhei and his mother both assure him the flavor is authentic.

Ten sniffs again. “I will be the judge of that.” He takes one bite with a sour expression, pauses, and declares, “It’s still good.”

“I thought so.”

* * *

The next day, Yangyang does not bring food at all, save the buns he bought off of the auntie on his way over. “It’s just my company.”

“That isn’t something fun,” Ten challenges, but he takes the bun and relaxes to lounge on his crumbling wall and he smiles at Yangyang brightly. “Perhaps it’s best you don’t bring me food everyday. It’s too much like worship. I’ll get spoiled.”

“It’s not worship!” Yangyang sputters. “It’s just…”

Ten’s mouth twists into something sardonic. “If you say the real reason, I will throw you into the ocean myself.”

In some ways, it is pity. Yangyang cannot imagine Ten would appreciate his saying so.

“Will you show me your tattoos?” Yangyang says instead.

Ten is more than happy to oblige. He’s still lounging, but he holds out his arm — the most obvious ink on his skin — and grins when Yangyang shuffles forward to get a better look.

The design is rather beautiful, abstract and heavy. It is not delicate, like the flowers in Ten’s hair or the slope of his nose. It is not sharp, like the look in his eyes or the shape of his smiles. It is bold, beyond anything. But more than that it is a compass, and it _is_ moving. The point of the compass sways gently as Ten breathes, always pointing north.

“I once had a visitor — very tall and beautiful man—”

“I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” Yangyang interjects, before he’s shushed.

“He was covered in ink.” Ten’s eyes are far away and dreamy. “Absolutely beautiful.”

Yangyang’s hands hover over the tattoo, afraid to touch although he knows he cannot shatter. “He did this for you?”

Ten hums in affirmation. “He could not make the ink move, but when it stands still it starts to bore me.” He looks at the ink on his forearm, the sides of his mouth downturned. “I have more.”

There are words being scribbled and erased in a language Yangang cannot across Ten’s collarbones, old runes, and a large piece on Ten’s side. Yangyang flushes red when Ten slides his robe down his shoulders until he’s bare chested in the open room. Ten only laughs. “I thought you wanted to see?”

Yangyang won’t say he _doesn’t_ want to see, but some warning would have been nice. Ten is next to naked right in front of him, covered in ink and floating silk and the wicked smile and he _knows_ what he’s doing. After all, Ten is vain enough to have planned this appearance, if his smile is anything to go by.

“You can touch it if you’d like,” he says.

Yangyang certainly does not have that kind of courage. “This one is still,” he notes instead, even as he leans in to get a better look at it. Much like the one on Ten’s forearm, this one is bold and murky black — a moon, waning waxing crescent and struck with swords.

“No,” Ten says. There is a hand beneath Yangyang’s chin, and the god tips Yangyang’s face up to see him clearly. “It is always moving. Very slowly, but moving still.” When he smiles his hair falls across his forehead and Yangyang squints like he’s staring into the sun.

The flush rushes in before Yangyang can even register his embarrassment. “What is it?” he asks, jerking his chin away — to Ten’s great amusement.

“It’s the moon. What does it look like?”

“Like a tattoo.”

“It can be both.” Ten traces along the bold lines, eyes far away and fingers idle. “It reflects the cycle as it appears here. It is a slow shift.” The sun is high as it fades into late mid-afternoon, and it reflects off the white and bounces around like it’s trying to touch everything it can.

Yangyang sighs. “I should go,” he says quietly. The take-out box feels out of place here, and so does he. The leftover food is cold in his hands, and Ten’s fingers are covered in sauce threatening to smear across his robes.

“As long as you come back.” Ten merely shrugs. He watches Yangyang lumber upright with interest feigning boredom, and he calls out to Yangyang’s back when he hangs into the doorway. “Did you hear me? I said as long as you come back.”

“Of course,” Yangyang says with a small smile. “I said I was here for the summer, didn’t I?”

“The summer means nothing to me,” Ten replies airily. “I count time in decades. Tomorrow is nothing.”

Yangyang can only come back for so long. “Okay.”

He feels strange on the way home, too light and too heavy all at once.

* * *

“I’m not going tomorrow,” Yangyang tells Kun and Sicheng at the table, pushing his food around on the plate.

Kun and Sicheng share a glance, and Yangyang hears the clock tick one too many times before Kun says, “Alright. We weren’t going to ask.”

That’s almost worse, isn’t it? Yangyang hates feeling like a child who is being handled.

“You can go whenever you want,” Sicheng says clearly. “You just need to go. That’s all.”

And Yangyang knows that, too. Isn’t that why he came here in the first place? He isn’t here for crumbling buildings or picky gods or hot cakes or _roots._ He’s here to complete a task and that’s all.

“You have time,” Kun says.

Sicheng takes some of the rice and puts more on Yangyang’s plate, as it seems to be the only thing he’s up to eating.

“I’ll go soon,” he tells them, because if he says it out loud he feels better about putting it off. “It’s just a house.”

Kun smiles at him tightly. “So, how was Kunhang? I feel like you’d get along.”

Yangyang accepts the subject change with grace and puts everything else aside.

* * *

“You didn’t come yesterday.”

Yangyang slumps down and sits on the marble, folding his legs beneath him. He’s empty-handed and smiling tightly. “I thought you only measured time in decades or whatever.”

Ten blinks at him, mouth a thin line. “Well.” He pauses. “You’ve set up a pattern.”

“You _literally_ told me it was fine as long as I came back.”

“Yes, but there was a _pattern_.” Ten sniffs. “There was a precedent. I didn’t think you’d listen to me.”

Yangyang is pretty sure Ten says half of the things he says just to appear ancient and mysterious, but it is not as though he has not stepped out of this place this century. He had to get his tattoos done, for one, and wasn’t perplexed by styrofoam or Tupperware or the way Yangyang is dressed. Ten has even let slip curses and colloquialisms that betray more socialization than his robes and flower crown suggest.

“Do you leave here ever?” Yangyang asks.

“Leave here?” Ten laughs. “Here as in...the temple?”

“I mean.” Yangyang makes a face. “The amenities aren’t great.”

“But the _view_.”

“But the view,” Yangyang agrees. It is breathtaking, so much water and sunshine and green and white, gold on the horizon. “But it’d got to get boring, right?” He presses forward when it seems Ten won’t answer. “Where did you get your tattoos done?”

“In town,” Ten admits after a moment. “I...did not enjoy myself, despite the company.” He grimaces. “I do not like tourists.”

Yangyang laughs. That’s something he can understand, even if Kun’s livelihood depends on them. In a lot of ways, he himself is a tourist. This isn’t his home. It’s just a good memory. That’s all this town will be for many people. “You’ve stayed sequestered up here because you don’t like tourists?”

“They are loud,” Ten argues. “And they cannot see me. It’s annoying. What’s the point of going down?”

“They can’t see you?”

Ten shakes his head, mouth downturned and sour. “Only those connected with this town can see me. Tourists are superficial. They don’t have roots here.” He rolls his eyes. “A god walks among them and they can’t even see me. What’s the point?”

Yangyang takes a slow and measured breath. “I couldn’t see you the first day.”

“Oh. No.” Ten hums. “That was me. I wasn’t sure.”

“You weren’t sure?”

Ten shrugs again, stretching his legs out in front of him. Although his feet are bare they’re spotless. “I don’t know everything. I feel a lot. I simply have more time to ask more questions.” He grins at Yangyang. “You feel connected here but you’re too floaty. I look at you and there is just—” he makes a strange sound, like white noise. “It hurts my head, sometimes.”

“Well, sorry,” Yangyang says, sarcasm dripping out of hairline fractures.

Ten misses it completely. “Oh, it’s alright. You can see me, so it doesn’t matter that you’re barely grounded. I don’t make the rules.”

Yangyang swallows a lump in his throat. “Don’t you make the rules? Isn’t that your job?”

Ten laughs. “Job? My job is to look beautiful and be worshipped.” He tilts his head back, lavish. “I can put things back in place, but the rules of the world were decided long before I walked out of the sea.”

“So you’re useless.”

“Oh, don’t be so sharp.” Ten clicks his tongue. “What? Do you have rules you’d like rewritten?”

Yangyang purses his lips. “No,” he says eventually.

“I’d put things in place for you,” Ten says eventually, running a hand through his hair. “I’ve grown plenty fond of you. Is that enough?”

“Um.” Yangyang feels the wind blow past and comes back to himself. His cheeks are red. “Okay. I’ll, uh, let you know.”

Ten laughs again and again.

* * *

Several days pass, and Yangyang is carefully kneading dough per Kun’s instructions when he says, “I’ll go to the house tomorrow.”

The sun is peeking in through the windows. Yangyang is well on his way to being a morning person, per necessity. Kun is going through paperwork at the table, and he does not look up. His fingers halt at the corners of his paper, but it only for a moment and then the sound of rustling returns to the room. “Alright.”

“Can I have some of the bread when it’s done?”

Kun does look up this time, with a smile. “If you’d like.”

Yangyang watches it rise in the oven but his mind is elsewhere.

* * *

“I made this.”

Ten raises his eyebrows and takes the bread, carefully wrapped. “What is the special occasion?”

“There isn’t one,” Yangyang says dismissively. “But I can’t stay today.” He has to run through town and pick up the keys and paperwork from City Hall, and mentally prepare himself for the next. He could have done it this morning, had he not spent his time preparing for this instead. “Would you like to go into town tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?” Ten frowns. The package in his hands is lowered to his lap, and all of his attention is on Yangyang still standing in the archway.

“Yes.” Yangyang huffs. “I know you know what tomorrow is. When the sun rises next, right?”

“I know what tomorrow is,” Ten says haughtily. “It just seems...a bit out of nowhere.”

“You don’t have to,” Yangyang says quickly. He shoves his hands in his pockets. They’re shaking slightly. “I’d just like it if you came.”

“Well. I suppose I can’t say no to a summoning.” Ten sniffs the bread, unsure. “Will you meet me here?”

“No. Meet me at Auntie’s stall. It’s just down the path.” Yangyang bites his lip to tatters. “It’s not a big deal. You know.”

“Yes, surely it’s not.” Ten looks at Yanyang wryly. “But I know the auntie. I’ll meet you in the morning.” His eyebrow twitches and his smile is sideways. “When the sun rises, right?”

“Yes. Okay. Good.” Yangyang swallows. “I’ll...I’ll see you tomorrow.”

The package is still in Ten’s lap, and his posture is very straight, his voice even. Soft, maybe. “Goodbye.”

Yangyang bows his head. “Goodbye. But...just until tomorrow.”

“Until tomorrow.”

Until tomorrow.

* * *

Sicheng gives Yangyang some money for breakfast, but when Yangyang makes his way to the stall Ten is already leaning against the open window with a hot cake in his mouth.

He looks ridiculous. His robes are draped beautifully, his skin shining in the morning sun. The flowers in his hair are smaller today and the wind hardly makes them dance — Yangyang misses the movement, only a little. Ten certainly does not look like a local.

Oddly, he is likely the most local of them all by definition.

“I can’t remember the last time we met each other,” says the auntie, jolly in the morning. She’s manning her pans and the area smells golden, like butter and something cozy. “You should come down more often.”

Ten grins around his mouthful. “If you feed me, of course.” As though Yangyang is in on the secret, he holds up hot cakes wrapped in paper. “For you.”

“I can pay,” he tells the auntie, digging in his pockets.

“Don’t you dare.” She looks at him down her nose. “It’s more than covered.”

“Thank you,” Yangyang says, but he slams a few bills on her stall counter and grabs Ten by the arm before she can chastise him for not listening to his elders. “Come on. It’s not far.”

The walk to the house is a lot further than the walk to the ruins, but Yangyang has been walking a lot these days and Ten barely seems to recognize the brisk stroll as exercise. He nearly leaves Yangyang in the dust, save he has no idea where they’re going. It doesn’t help that Yangyang’s pace slows the closer they get to the end of the line.

He doesn’t know why he’s so adverse to this. He knows it’s why he came to this town. It’s the least he can do.

The house is small, pink, and overgrown. His grandmother’s neighbors have been maintaining the yard, cutting the grass, and watering the plants, but weeding and clipping the bushes is more than Yangyang’s family felt comfortable asking for. It’s clear more work was done than necessary. There’s fresh mulch in the flower beds, and the porch has been swept.

She was well loved.

It feels...like Yangyang is the last one to pay her her dues.

“What is this building?” Ten asks, when they’re both standing in front of the door and Yangyang’s holding the key in the air between them, unsure. Hesitating.

Yangyang swallows. “It’s just a house.”

“Oh.” Ten frowns. “Then what are we waiting for?” He opens the screen door and turns the doorknob, locked giving way under his hand. He floats inside, leaving Yangyang frozen on the porch staring at his back.

It takes a moment, but Yangyang shakes his head and follows.

It’s bizarre in many ways. He has not been in this house for some time but there is so much he remembers. The way the third floorboard in the foyer creaks. The paint chipping off of the walls. The crooked wires atop the television. There’s a rug in the living room that is faded and fraying that Yangyang remembers laying on during the evenings, playing his games while his gran read her romance novels.

The house smells like floral and salt and mothballs and dust. There are some boxes packed up already by his cousins who have stopped by, but it has been put on Yangyang’s shoulders to sort through her things. He offered, to be fair — he had not cried at her funeral. It felt like due penance.

Death is funny. It’s not real, and it can’t stare you in the face until you turn around, and the finality of it makes it seem as though it’s always been that way. The house feels empty in a way Yangyang has never known, but it’s been so long since he’s seen it full that his memory feels faulty.

“There are a lot of things here,” Ten notes casually from the kitchen. “So many pots! Who needs all of these pots?”

“People who cook?” Yangyang says, looking inside some of the packed boxes. There’s the giant label _MOM_ scrawled on the side in permanent marker. There are children’s toys, a doll that might be an antique, and a moth-eaten baby blanket. Books, dog-eared and hand-written in the margins. He picks up a Christmas ornament of ornate glass and swallows thickly before returning it to where it’s nestled.

“You only need one pot to cook, don’t you?”

Yangyang laughs. “I don’t know.” He’s seen Kun use many more pots at one time, but that expertise seems unnecessary when all Yangyang knows how to cook is ramen and fried egg.

The bedrooms are also half-packed away. The linens are stripped off of the beds and folded neatly at the base. There’s a crib in the closet that Yangyang remembers sleeping in when he was much younger. There are spare pool cues leaning up against the wall for the table downstairs that he believes his gran sold off a couple of years ago. Bottles of alcohol that are filled with buttons or change.

He pulls the empty bins out and closes the closet slowly, listening to the familiar creak of the hinges.

“What are we doing here?’ Ten asks, and Yangyang hears the clattering of pots. “It’s a strange place to visit.”

“It was my grandma’s,” Yangyang says.

“Oh. Where is she?”

Yangyang doesn’t answer and Ten doesn’t seem particularly invested in the answer.

Since the bedrooms and the living have already been started, Yangyang picks up the tubs and makes his way into the kitchen. The non-stick pans are going to his aunt, and fine china is going to his mother, and the kitchen table is going to be auctioned off but needs to be labeled for the movers. The silverware is his, if he wants it. The wine glasses are his other cousins’, although there’s a shot glass that his grandma was keeping to have a drink with Yangyang and it’s his. If he wants it.

He runs through the list on his way into the kitchen and sees Ten sitting on the floor pulling out all of the cleaning supplies under the sink for no reason. “I just like seeing what people keep down here,” Ten muses.

“That’s weird,” Yangyang says, plopping the bins down on the old vinyl floor.

Ten doesn’t seem to mind. “The plants are sad.”

Yangyang blinks. “The plants? Don’t tell me something is growing down there.”

“No,” Ten says with a grimace. “On the windowsill.”

On the windowsill there is notepad crinkling in the sun and a small collection of jars all drooping. Four, unnamed herbs — Yangyang thinks his gran told him about staring an herb garden but he can’t remember what she planted. Tentatively, he reaches out and picks up a jar. He brushes fingers across a brown leaf and it crumbles under his touch.

“Mint,” Ten says. “One of them is oregano. Thyme and maybe dill? Or they were.”

Yangyang frowns. “They’re dead?”

Ten laughs. “Long dead. No one has been here for some time. They held on for a long time, though. They were well-loved.”

Carefully, Yangyang reaches out for the kitchen chair and sits down slowly while his world shifts. This is not him turning around, but there is death in this room and he stares at it held between his hands. It feels like a punch to the stomach that he long saw coming.

“What?” Ten asks, still by the sink. “What’s wrong?”

Yangyang opens his mouth to say something and finds that he can’t, so he doesn’t. His throat is dry and his stomach is rocking. He wonders if he had stopped by at the beginning of the summer if they would still be alive. He wonders if the others who have stopped by poured water in the soil between packing up boxes. He wonders and wonders.

No one has been here for some time.

No one will be here for some time more.

He sighs and it’s shaky.

“Is it the plant? Is that it?” Ten sounds nearly frantic, and far closer than before, and Yangyang looks up from staring at the jar to find that Ten has moved to Yangyang’s feet. His robes flutter out around him, brushing the tiles, and there’s a line on his forehead that might be concern. “Is that what’s wrong?”

Yangyang does not know how to begin. He holds out the jar. “It’s dead,” he says listlessly.

Ten cups the jar in both hands, covering Yangyang’s, and sticks his thumbs in the soil. Yangyang feels it like a jolt, electric, and Ten’s hands grow so warm around him they nearly burn. If Yangyang were not so focused on the drooping leaves, he would be concerned.

Before his eyes, the small plant turns green from the root. It starts slowly at the stem and branches out along the veins until the mint is vibrant and breathing. The wind rustles in through the window. The leaf that had crumbled is still jagged, but it’s _green_ , and it’s alive.

“Is this better?” Ten is biting his lip. His hands are still around Yangyang’s on the jar, and his eyes are searching. He does not understand. What is death to someone like this? He is only doing what he knows to do. “I can only put it back where it is meant to be. Is that enough?”

Yangyang...laughs. Short and shallow. “This is...yes. It’s enough.” He smiles, and he feels Ten breathe a sigh of relief like the house settles around them both. The plant shakes with Yangyang’s hands, and Ten’s are there to steel them both. “Thanks.”

Ten smiles slowly, looking up at Yangyang from the floor. “Alright.” He looks at the window. “I can fix the others as well.”

“No.” Yangyang holds the jar close to his chest. “They’re dead. Their time is done. This is...this is plenty.” His thumb brushes a soft leaf. “Thank you.”

“Didn’t I tell you?” Ten squeezes Yangyang’s thigh, a solid comfort. The pressure of his body is warm against Yangyang’s knees, and it feels as though he is everywhere. “I’ve grown fond of you.”

Yangyang laughs. “That’s kind of weird,” he says.

“No,” Ten disagrees simply. “You’re the one who cried about a plant.”

“I didn’t cry!” Yangyang sniffs. His nose does feel a bit clogged, but he did not cry. “And you’re the one who freaked out about me crying.”

Ten’s face twists distastefully. “I don’t like crying. I don’t understand it. Aren’t you just a bag of water? Why would you waste it?”

Yangyang takes a deep breath. “I don’t get it either, man.” Yangyang doesn’t get much of anything, but he knows he doesn’t want to cry here. He wants to do his duty, and he wants to process, and maybe he’ll cry tonight the tears he owed months ago when everything happened and he could not.

“You are putting these many pots in boxes?” Ten asks suddenly, standing.

“Uh, yeah.”

“I will help.”

Yangyang raises an eyebrow. “Have you ever packed anything in your life?”

“I’ve lived a _very_ long life,” Ten answers, which is not an answer at all. He huffs when Yangyang waits for more. “No.”

“That’s what I thought.” But Yangyang sets the small jar of mint on the table and stands as well, dusting off his hands. “I’ll accept the help, though.” It seems Ten specializes in putting things where they belong. Surely he’ll take to this like a duck to water. “Let’s get started.”

* * *

It takes several weeks to get everything in order at the house. Yangyang leaves early in the morning and meets Ten at the stall where they’ll happily chat and eat and be merry, and then they’ll make the long trek down the road to the overgrown house and chip away at belongings that were once hers and now are everyone else's. He returns to the inn in the evening, exhausted, and is quiet unless Yukhei or Kun can pull something out of him. Sicheng leaves him to his silence, wrapping around him like a cat.

Some days, Yangyang returns the next morning to find progress made since they left the night before, but Ten never mentions it.

“You’ll leave when this is done,” Ten muses one day, brushing dust off of a photo album in the attic.

Yangyang doesn’t reply for a long moment. “Not immediately.”

Ten flips through its pages. Yangyang recognizes photographs of his mother as a child. “But this is why you came here, no?”

Yangyang doesn’t answer at all.

“You’re connected here, you know?” Ten flips another page, and there is a cutout of Yangyang as a baby in his father’s arms, his grandmother just behind. “Everything is connected to something. Multiple things, usually.”

“Roots,” Yangyang agrees. Ten looks at him sharply. “My gran used to say that everything has roots except for the sea.”

“And even the sea always comes home,” Ten says.

Yangyang holds his breath.

Ten smiles sadly. “Your grandmother was a smart woman.” He sets the photo album in a box and moves on.

* * *

The summer wanes, and the house is packed up in neat boxes, and Kun kisses the top of Yangyang’s head. “You did well.”

Yangyang rustles his hair. “Gross.” His time here is almost over, but he’s happy that he did what was necessary. He prepares to make his last journey up the cobbled path to the ruins on the cliff. Kun hands him another basket — again for two — and Yangyang lumbers under the weight.

When he arrives at the temple he finds they are not alone.

It’s disappointing. This area has been empty every time, save its regular, but today is the day that beach goers have found the small and strange safe haven.

“Hey!” they say, friendly, when they see Yangyang come in with his basket. They wave beer bottles in his direction and they smell of sunscreen. “Sorry, man. Feel free to join! The view is great.”

Ten is nowhere in sight.

“That’s alright.” Yangyang bows awkwardly, old habits, and leaves.

He walks back past the stall and asks the auntie, “Have you seen him pass by?”

“No, dear,” she tells him, and hands him a sugared plum.

Yangyang heads towards the house anyway.

Everything is boxed up or labeled for the auction. His uncle will be coming down once the summer melts into fall to do the packing and the sending off, and the house will be here alone. Kun mentioned buying it if none of the family wanted it, but Yangyang doesn’t want to think of the finality of deeds.

He checks every room and there is no one here.

Yangyang is too young to be lonely. He knew this would happen eventually, but he thought they might have one more day.

Ten had held his hand the night before and covered Yangyang’s mouth when the time came for goodbyes. _As long as you come back_. Over and over. What is tomorrow to a god? Tomorrow is a decade, or a moment. The next time the sun rises.

And Ten has the nerve to disappear.

“You seem upset,” Kun notes when Yangyang returns. His eyes flicker to the full picnic basket.

“I’m not upset,” Yangyang says, clearly upset.

Kun and Sicheng set up the table on the back lawn and spread out the checkered blanket and eat the food they unknowingly prepared for a god. Yangyang laughs and smiles and whines about spending the entire summer packing only to pack again, and he doesn’t forget his worries but the jagged edge is weathered down into something that doesn’t snag.

* * *

When night falls, Yangyang trudges up the cliff one last time. The water makes the air cold but it also makes it sparkle, and the wind is an old friend wrapping around him. He has never been here when the moon is high, the light on the sea is beautiful, and the stone is immaculate even as it threatens to fall further and further into the ocean.

Ten is still not here.

“Do you just not want to say goodbye?” Yangyang accuses. He shivers. The sound of his footsteps echo as he searches among the cracks and crannies for a god that will hide until he would like to be found. “That’s not very ‘immortal being’ of you. Pretty immature.”

Nothing. Just the whistling of the wind. The sea, the stone, the statues, and him.

He puts the Tupperware on the ground and says goodbye to the wind, and the sea, and the stone, and the statues, and the part of himself he’s undoubtedly leaving behind. “The summer is over,” he says. “I won’t be back tomorrow. If you remember when tomorrow is.”

Still, nothing.

Yangyang swallows his disappointment. “Goodbye.” It tastes bitter.

It is the last time Yangyang treks down the cobbled path.

* * *

The train station looks a lot different now than it did at the beginning of the summer. He feels almost the same about leaving as he had about arriving — the subtle dread wrapped in something wistful.

Yangyang steps on to the platform by his lonesome and recognizes the woman standing at the till. “Hello,” he says, in a language that he’s grown too used to over the summer. “Do you remember me?”

She simply smiles at him. “I hope you enjoyed your stay.”

He did. “Thanks.”

Yukhei and Kunhang had both dropped him off at the train station steps despite how early in the morning it was. “You’re okay by yourself?” Kunhang had asked through a yawn.

“Yeah.” And Yangyang had trudged up the dreary steps and found each level a little harder, like the roots he’d half-grown don’t want to let him leave. Perhaps that is just wishful thinking.

There is almost no one here at this time. There are a few people wearing business suits who use the train to commute, but Yangyang’s train route is too long for local use. The commuters hop onto their routes and leave Yangyang alone.

Alone, and still keeping an eye on the door hoping that his one regret will rectify itself.

It doesn’t.

Yangyang steps up into the train car half an hour later and settles into a window seat, all by his lonesome. He is holding a small jar of mint in his hands, nestled for a long journey.

The train spends an odd amount of time at the station. There are only one or two of passenger’s boarding, but the doors remain open, and Yangyang settles in and puts his headphones on so he can close his eyes and pretend he’s ready to leave.

Someone settles into the seat next to him. Yangyang feels the fluttering of flowerpetals across his eyelids.

He opens his eyes and finds a god in the row.

Ten looks as much himself as ever. The draping robes, the bold ink, the long hair, the flowers, but his expression is sad. Almost pinched.

The train still does not move. They have surely been at the station for far too long.

“I never took you as a traveler,” Yangyang says dumbly, after the silence swallows them both.

“I’m not.” Ten smiles without humor. “I’m rooted to this place. I cannot leave.”

“Oh.” Whatever hope was burgeoning is squashed with a heel. “Well.”

Ten holds out an empty container. “Your Tupperware.”

The moment feels absurd. It’s not even Yangyang’s Tupperware. It’s Kun’s, and Kun has so much he doubts this one will be missed. “Thanks,” he says anyway, tucking it away at his side.

Ten still does not leave.

“Do you have something you’d like to say?” Yangyang prompts.

“I don’t like goodbyes,” Ten says haughtily, as though Yangyang had asked him for one. In a way, Yangyang has, but he respects that Ten might not deliver. He won’t pretend it doesn’t make his heart drop.

“Okay.”

“You’ll come back?”

“I don’t know.” It will be many years.

“You’ll come back,” Ten says firmly, his chin stubborn. He brings his hand up to cup Yangyang’s cheek and Yangyang stares at him unseeing until Ten’s lips brush his own, quick as a wink. “As long as you come back.”

“Uh…” Blink, pause, heartbeat.

Ten flicks him on the forehead. “That’s it?”

Yangyang jolts up from his seat and kisses Ten again. Ten is warm and solid and bold and fluttering and vain and picky. Strong as stone and lovely as the sea. He does not melt under Yangyang, but he bends. It feels like things are put in the right place.

“Goodbye,” Ten says sadly, one last pat on Yangyang’s cheek, and then he stands and floats out of the standing doors.

Everything starts moving with a jolt, and Yangyang wonders if any time has passed at all.

* * *

_As long as you come back._

* * *

There is something strange about beach towns, the old ones where things are dreary and alive all at once. The sleepy towns, the haunted towns, the towns with roots. There’s a certain nostalgia even the first time you step on the old cobblestones. Kun says it’s a liminal space — separate from the rest of the world, grounded in reality, a place that follows you. A place you can always return to.

Yangyang gets off of the train with a grunt. “Stop pushing me.”

Dejun looks unapologetic, throwing Yangyang’s heavy bag on the platform. “You are too slow.”

“I was _asleep._ ”

“I’ve never been here before!” Dejun clambers out of the train car and takes a deep breath of sea air. In Yangyang’s nose it’s too fishy, but Dejun sighs like he’s satisfied with the magic of it.

“Me, neither,” Yangyang grumbles. “You don’t see me throwing you around.”

“We just graduated,” Dejun chides. “The world is our oyster. There’s too much to see to dawdle.” He picks up his backpack and waits impatiently for Yangyang to follow suit. “Don’t you want to see it all? There’s not nearly enough time.”

“These towns are all the same,” Yangyang says, but Dejun’s enthusiasm is contagious, and he grins as they walk into the open air alongside the flush of travelers.

The town looks more or less the same as it had outside the train window — a little dreary, a little lifeless, with roots. The air is clean, the brine from the ocean is thrown over the space like a blanket, and Yangyang’s enormous suitcase is the heaviest thing for miles. Yangyang is light. Everything feels light.

“It’s been so long since I lived by the sea,” he says.

“We should go to the beach tonight,” Dejun offers. “I doubt any tourists will be there late.”

Yangyang laughs. “We are tourists and _we_ will be there.”

Dejun nods stubbornly, as though it’s decided. “Yes, we will. Let’s get to the hotel.”

Further into town, there is a ruin on a cliff. The ruins are rooted in the heart and soul of the town. Now it’s a mess of columns and rubble atop a crumbling cliff. Stone, stone, more stone, and the sea. Yangyang can see it in the distance.

These towns are all the same.

If Ten is the earth, then Yangyang is the sea — ever moving, and somehow always coming home.

“Should we get a taxi?” Dejun wonders aloud.

“You go on ahead.” Yangyang smiles. The sun sinks into the pavement. “I’m going for a walk.”

**Author's Note:**

> (∩｡･ｏ･｡)っ.ﾟ☆｡'`


End file.
